The Rants & Rambles of A Grumpy Old Dude

It’s Only Fair

First, I attended the Multicultural Festival. All I had to do was eat and ogle, for both of which I am eminently over-qualified. Then I had to expend a little more energy to transport the daughter and her stuff, and set her and her friend up for the Cherry Park Festival.

Friday night, the city held its annual cruise night. They block off six blocks of the main street, centered on the city hall, assemble three hundred antique cars at the big park, and have them do a drive-past to their assigned spots. Antique to them is anything over twenty-five years old. Antique to me is anything older than I am. I don’t want to see a Bondo-filled example of some rusted-out piece of crap I had to junk.

Sadly, there were only two Corvettes, neither of them the scoop-side model that I adore, but the newer StingRay. There were some older vehicles. The oldest was a 1902 something whose name I don’t remember. Back then, there were lots of tiny little companies which made a few cars a year. Ford was the first to install the assembly line. It’s like the local Bob’s Motors, a real name to conjure with. Would you buy a car from a place called Bob’s? Some people do. I see the occasional licence-plate ring. Or the German-named Wunder Car Sales. I think his motto is, “If you get a good car, it’s a Wunder!”

Sunday, the daughter and I went to another Free-Thinkers’ meeting, more on that in a later post. The first time we went, the city was having a Car-Free Sunday, and the entire main street was closed to traffic. The handicapped lady had to hobble two blocks to the venue. This Sunday they merely closed off three blocks and lined up tables in an attempt to set a Guinness record for the longest/largest picnic.

Saturday I transported the daughter, her friend and all their stuff to the big park and helped (?) set them up for the Anti-Violence Festival. It’s held on a wooded island. The daughter’s gazebo tent and a couple of other, unprotected displays were the only ones to be in the sun most of the day. The Liberal Party suddenly packed up and left about 2 PM. Maybe they got too hot. Maybe they had to rush off to buy another vote. Attendance was poor, perhaps because of the heat. Once you got there, under the trees, it was nice, but the getting there was hot, hot, hot!

Again, commerce was the unifying factor, but both the sales and community-service displays were a little more towards the “hippy, tree-hugger” end of the social spectrum. Booths included Bahai, Sexual Assault Support, the YM and YWCAs, Healing Gemstones, Hatha Yoga, the Liberal political party, who bailed early, Transition K-W, which is a bit like the Unlearn group, teaching new ways to conserve and preserve water, air and land.

There was the Qigong Oasis teaching oriental ways and thought processes, a Ride-For-Cancer sign-up booth, some mostly organic-type, snacks and drinks, and a booth teaching meditation. The local Aids Awareness group was there trying cut down on bullying and harassment of gays. The Barterworks group was there, and a group called Time Banks. They trade services. I fix your toilet, you repair his car, he shampoos someone else’s carpet, and so on, and so on. The Conservative party was not represented, but the NDP was, as well as the save-the-environment Green Party.

The Human Rights people were there, as was the Right To Vote group. That surprised me. I thought that everyone, of-age, in Canada had the right to vote. There was a booth promoting the upcoming Link Festival, which is like the Multicultural Festival, just without all the food. I saw Dollars and Sense, a monetary reform advocate group, World Without Wars, Earth-Friendly Living and Hope Stream.

I picked up a lapel button which reads Imaginez La Paix, which means Imagine the Peace, in French. The French are serious about peace. The only country which has surrendered more, and faster, is Egypt, during the Six-Day Israeli War. Put down the guns, put up the hands.

There was a group called Fair Vote, which is a proponent of proportional representation. They don’t think it’s right that any political party which garners only a few more votes than its opponents, gets a majority government, while, for example, the Green Party gets a million votes, but only one seat in government. They had a huge bowl of wrapped caramel candies that they urged people to take. Once you’d peeled the wrapper off, you were supposed to vote for one of the three main parties by dropping the wrapper through one of three labeled holes in a sheet of Plexiglas. When you did that, you saw that every wrapper wound up in the same shiny galvanized garbage pail with a sign that said, “That’s where all your votes go.”

On Saturday, as we were doing Anti-Violence, our twin city up the road was holding an AfroFest. Next week, in our big park, there will be a Craft Beer and Ribsfest. On the 28th, in a smaller park, nearer to us, is a Croatian FoodFest. There’s food and foreign culture from all over the world in this city.

The Link Festival is in early August, and, in early September, there will be a Word On The Street Festival, with book sales, free books, learn-to-read groups, and lots of other Printed S**t. There is a small WordsWorth bookstore downtown, and three book exchanges/second-hand. The entire family are friends with two of the proprietors, with me going back 45 years, five locations and three owners, at one. I imagine we’ll all turn out for that one. Among the three of us, we have almost as many books in this house as the smallest of the three stores.

I’d never paid that much attention until I needed blogger-fodder. When I worked, I needed the weekends for other things. Now that I’m retired, I need them for a good sit in the cool indoors, otherwise why would God have invented air-conditioning?

That’s a lot of festivities in which to participate! We have the St. John’s Regatta coming up Aug. 1st, and that’s about it. We have the Tely 10 race on Sunday, but it’s more of a traffic quagmire…no booths or anything of the sort around, although it would add to the after party portion of the race.Hmmm….

What?! No Count-The-Clams festival? No Screech-Barrel Rolling party? You should contact city hall and demand some social and intellectual stimulation. No, wait. You’d have to explain intellectual and stimulation. Maybe just settle for a wine-slurping block party.

We had those in our neighbourhood organized by..oh yeah, me and the DH ladies!! We decided to give it a rest last year and now it has gone by the wayside. Sad…we thought maybe the younger crowd would pick it up, but sadly no. So..maybe next year….

Through practice we’ve got it down to a science, packing cases, loading the car, setting it up. Biggest deal is hauling 2/300 lbs from the closest we can get the car, to the actual display site. Could be a block.
Call me when you arrive. We’ll try a beer sample, or 17, then maybe we’ll stagger over for some ribs.

Your mention of the Fair Vote group, Archon, prompted me to refresh my memory on preferential voting. It turns out to be a simple case of mathematics that in any races involving multiple similar candidates, the more extreme candidates have an unfair advantage, reason being that votes are split among the similar ones. Preferential voting, which requires ranking of available candidates, produces fewer extremes.

Voting is much on our minds down here in the baking center of the continent. You might be aware that we are in the midst not only of a recession but a political civil war between factions so far apart that only total victory will satisfy either side. Our entire economy is being held ransom in the bargain as a fiscal cliff looms at year’s end. Compromise has become a dirty word because our legislatures are polarized to extremes. Alas.

If you want to go back to a Jan. 3/12 post, Canadians and Americans: Similar Differences, I discuss the increasing polarization of Americans, not just in politics; https://archonsden.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/canadians-and-americans-similar-differences/ Can’t even blame the weather. The sheep would be bleating just as loudly, even if snow were falling. No good shepherd, concerned about the welfare of the entire flock, but competing guides, both convinced there’s no cliff where they’re heading. When **it hits the fan, Romney can go live on the Caymans, but everybody else has to stay and clean up the meadow.

I agree that American culture is different from Canadian, Archon, but I can’t agree that we were settled by “order-obeying drones”. In fact, I think it is quite the opposite, that a lot of the people who settled here were the type that absolutely couldn’t stand to be told what to do. I think the adjective that best fits us down here is “contentious”. If you say black, we say white. If you say potato, we say po tah toe. Probably accounts for why we have been at war so often throughout our history.

BTW, congratulations on your economic success. I heard on the news yesterday that for the first time in recorded history the median net worth of Canadians has exceeded that of Americans. This is apparently because your housing market didn’t crash as far as ours, but however you did it, good for you.

I’m not sure how you got facing South on a North-bound train. In my post, I did say that America got the individuality, and the Northern half of the continent, i.e. Canada, got the order-following farmer, sheep-herder drones.